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nah. what’s annoying about WLC is that he argues defeated views as of they’re not deeply flawed. a PhD in philosophy cannot be ignorant of what he’s doing. he’s happy to steer away from any objections to the eye rolling nature of his arguments but won’t acknowledge criticism except begrudgingly.

there’s a reason his debates with fellow philosophers are few. one should check out his fiasco’s with shelly kagan and john shook on morality. when you have to result to rhetorical tricks, like appeals to negative consequence (“if there are no objective moral values, then we’re just … animals”, craig declared in the middle of losing to shook), you really only have the aim of being a jackass for jesus.

anyway, WLC has a great education … and no respect by his peers or me.

Well, WLC annoys me for more than more than one reason. Personally, the more I’ve read his works and seen his debates the more problems I find with him. Let’s admit it the man is a highly skilled public speaker. He’s very skilled at rhetorical tricks and playing on heart strings. It really rouses the crowd, and people eat it up!

Now, as far my arrogant comments go try watching any of his one sided reasonable faith podcasts. He always has a particular grin, and is always calling people “so philosophically naive.” It’s annoying.

That being said. Professional philosopher’s do use fine tuning arguments, and some still try to push the kalaam argument. I’m just saying this; because, well, it’s true. I don’t want to be dishonest.

i don’t actually know any professional philosophers that are disinterested that think WLC’s version of the kalam is at all interesting and i’ve been a student of philosophy for nearly thirty years now.

you can be very safe in saying it is sound that, because nothing produces nothing and since there is anything at all, something eternal exists. however, and craig will never cleanly or directly address, this “eternality” doesn’t require the personhood (ie volition) that “god” requires.

nor will he address that his metaphysical arguments can have no genuine impact on humanity except in the very same way that a compelling fiction (say like, “the odyssey”) does.

Well, various fine tuning arguments do tend to be more popular in academic circles than the kalaam argument, but I have seen it discussed in some academic circles, although to a much smaller degree. They do at least mention it. Now, I’m not saying it’s doesn’t have it’s problems, but these problems are discussed.

I’m getting a philosophy minor, which certainly makes me no philosophy expert. I, also, haven’t been studying it for 30 years. I just have my experience from dabbling in these types of courses. So, that’s where I’m getting my information.

you may like some of my blogs because i aim at showing through philosophy and psychology, christianity at least as it is understood in the west, is absurd and that through the use of dialectic analysis, most of it is incoherent and absurd.

for instance, people have conflated the greek pistis with belief (episteme) instead of persuasion or draw. from that mistake, you have the entire protestant west who declare that one can’t do anything to be saved, one can only believe. however, belief entails action and then itself cannot be true if it is true that nothing can be done to be saved. too, one can’t define soteriology by creeds since again, belief entails action and no creedal statement (such as jesus being born a virgin, etc.) is something a person can act on as a result of thinking it is the case.

i have several criticisms of apologetics. i think craig would have a hard time disagreeing because they entail to different ideas i know he espouses, only, these are the logical consequences for holding those views.

his challenge would be this:

if there are two identical universes and differ only in that one has a god and one does not, then if one cannot distinguish between the two, we can’t tell which we live in and no feature not experience of the world can be counted as evidence for our against the existence of deity.